Low contrast target detection based on 2D/3D range-gated imaging

Low contrast target detection is important in the applications of evidence gathering, protection from terrorists, remote surveillance, search and rescue, but it is difficult to detect by traditional imaging techniques. 2D/3D range-gated imaging(RGI) was proposed to detect low contrast targets. In our method, 2D range-gated imaging can output two-dimensional gate images of targets with background filtered or partly filtered to silhouette targets and simplify image processing of target extraction. If background is complex in gate images, 3D range-gated imaging can further reconstruct the spatial depth information collapsed in two-dimensional gate images, and then target can be easily distinguished from background by the depth map of target in a scene. Note that 3DRGI is realized by supperresolution depth mapping only based on the data of 2DRGI and there is no need to take time to get new data like depth scanning. Therefore, real-time performance is improved, and data volume is also reduced. Our research and experiments demonstrate that 2D/3D range-gated imaging is effective for low contrast target detection, even under low light or bad weather conditions.